When your supplier gives you lemons...

A pretty significant knifemaker that has a "midtech" line was explaining that they'd gotten 100 semi finished blades (water jetting and rough grinding done offsite by machine) that the final grinds and finishing were going to be done by hand. The person responsible for managing this failed to check the delivery and paid for them only for the maker to find out weeks later when it came time to finish the blades that there was a deviation from design of the blade.

Having been paid and it being a month after delivery by that time, the machine shop wasn't interested in paying for steel and cutting and grinding to make things right so the maker was looking at money paid, money tied up and a lot more money not coming in from the sale of the midtechs. Since he had to go back to the drawing board and come up with another design (perfectionists :rolleyes:...;)) that he could modify the blades to work to his liking (more time and money spent coming up with that) he was out even more, but he did it instead of "making do". Would a production company do that or just use that improper blade as a variant of the model and call it a "special run" so fans could gobble them up as "collectibles"? One maker decides the run is ruined and puts time into designing a new knife around what he's been given (when life gives you lemons make lemonade) while another just uses it and calls "collectable" .

I like seeing that sort of dedication to perfection out of a knife maker or manufacturer.

That's a cool story. Unfortunately, I don't think there are many companies who would do that, anymore.

TRX

November 24, 2013, 10:08 AM

I'd put the variant blanks up on my web site, eBay, or one of the blade forums. There's always a market for blanks in good steel, and the DIY guys don't fret about a few extra hours adjusting the shape to exactly what they want.